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Weekly News Round-Up with JB

In the news this week,

Inspired by the performance of fellow boxer James Toney, pound for pound great Manny Pacquiao has now also set his sights on the MMA ring. Thank goodness. For a second there I thought he might do something crazy and profitable like, I don’t know, fighting Mayweather! No, MMA definitely where it’s at.
Now, I kid of course; we all know that Pacman isn’t going to be dumb enough to go “well Toney suffered the exact fate most people predicted but maybe I’ll survive because…?”. Still, it isn’t completely out of order to think that, with all the boxers in the world, there’s gonna be someone with a promotable name who’s dumb enough to throw himself in the shark-tank. If nothing else then the half a million dead presidents in Toney’s pocket follwing his loss will attract some attention.

As we all know though anything can happen in MMA and a boxer will always have that puncher’s chance. They’ll also have no takedown defence so unless their strategy goes beyond “Punch him in the face” they, much like their forerunners Toney and Nishijima, will be sitting on their asses tapping the canvas and wondering where it all went wrong.
My advice? Find an MMA gym and start training a long time before you dive in because believe me when I say that the sharks in that tank aren’t going anywhere.

The increasingly ridiculous story of Overeem vs Fedor has been upped yet another notch as Overeem shot down rumors of him fighting Fedor’s younger brother Aleksander Emelianenko. Not only is he not fighting Aleks but Overeem also accuses Fedor of ducking a much bigger threat in Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva. Fair enough I guess, this kind of talk isn’t exactly rare in our sport but thanks to the wonders of the needlessly popular world of Twitter Overeem shared these thoughts with Silva himself, going so far as to claim “The real reason M-1/Fedor called me out is to distract attention of a possible match with Silva. He wants Fedor but M-1 don’t want Silva.”

"Picture is totally authentic, for the record..."

This ordeal is quickly reaching soap opera levels of silliness and everytime any of these guys finish an interview I half expect the Melrose Place theme to kick in (why didn’t I fake a Melrose Place picture instead? Missed opportunity) so at this point I’d like to make a small request: please, somebody fight somebody!
Also in the news it seems that UFC exile Karo Parisyan, or The Heat if you’re Mike Goldberg and love to make insufferable puns, has been pardoned by the organization and is being let back on board with a fight against Dennis Hallman. The judoka went from being a fan favourite and solid welterweight contender to suffering a major breakdown or, to use the medical term, losing his shit almost overnight, mainly due to personal issues and an addiction to painkillers. His last fights in the UFC saw him get crushed by Thiago Alves and then being gifted a ridiculously bullshit decision against then newcomer Dong Hyun Kim, only to have the decision changed to a No Contest after testing positive for painkillers. This and pulling out of a fight in the very last minute was the final straw and he was booted from the promotion with Dana White putting on his serious face and saying Parisyan would never fight for the UFC again. You know, just like Tito. Or Randy.

Things seem to have changed though and Parisyan has been offered a three fight deal with the UFC, starting with his fight against Hallman at UFC 123 this November. Will Hallman be able to take The Heat or will Parisyan burn out? We’ll find out in a couple of months.

See what I did there Goldberg? No, you can’t borrow that one.
For those of you silly gits who might have missed Bellator 27 this week because you had to get up and work the next morning (losers) you lost out on one of the most awesome fights of the year between Joe Soto and Joe Warren. Soto had been unstoppable and was undefeated coming into the fight against cocky Team Quest stand out Warren, who’d done very well in DREAM until he met Bibiano Fernandes.
How’d this fight go down? I’m not going to spoil it, check for yourselves

That’s MMA at it’s finest people, and if you can’t appreciate that fight then what the hell are you even doing reading this blog?
As surreal as it might seem to fans of K-1 and Pride, it seems like Mark Hunt might finally come into a fight not only having trained but in shape! Pictures floating around the rank sea of the internet show a slimmed down Hunt working with American Top Team, which at the moment is one of the best camps in the world. I don’t know about you but this gives me some hope for Hunt’s chances here as a win in the UFC sets up a lot of interesting match-ups for him. The durable striker is best known for his ridiculously sturdy chin, having taken headkicks from Mirko Crocop flush and kept on coming. However he’s equally infamous for lacking a solid ground game though hopefully his stint with ATT will help solve this for him and put him back on track.

He’ll be going up against grappler Sam McCorkle at UFC 119 later this month so we’ll have to wait and see what becomes of this sudden change in work ethic. Until then let’s sit back and enjoy the samoan fighter’s greatest moment as a fighter and Randy Couture’s greatest moment as a commentator.